Cavs up 3-1 in series, but it hasn’t been easy

Tuesday

Apr 29, 2008 at 12:01 AMApr 29, 2008 at 5:53 AM

The hard fouls keep coming. So does the trash talking. LeBron James and the Cavaliers, though, keep playing basketball — and winning — putting themselves a win away from the Eastern Conference semifinals for the third straight season.

Chris Beaven

The hard fouls keep coming. So does the trash talking.

LeBron James and the Cavaliers, though, keep playing basketball — and winning — putting themselves a win away from the Eastern Conference semifinals for the third straight season.

“I’m proud of our guys,” Head Coach Mike Brown said in a conference call Monday. “They’ve stayed poised and continued to play the game of basketball without reacting to anything that was peripheral.”

That’s enabled the Cavs to take a 3-1 lead in their best-of-seven first-round series with the Wizards. Game 5 is Wednesday night at Quicken Loans Arena.

But aside from a 30-point win in Game 2, this series has not been easy for the Cavs.

First, there’s been the constant chirping from the Wizards off the floor, and sometimes on it, combined with their intent to deliver hard fouls on James. That’s brought tempers to a boiling point several times.

Then there’s the actual games. The Cavs didn’t secure a win in Sunday’s Game 4 until the final buzzer. They didn’t lock up a win in Game 1 until the last minute. And they had to overcome their 36-point loss in Game 3 on Thursday.

But Brown likes how his team has kept a “bunker mentality” by banding together and looking to each other to get through adversity.

“As soon as we lose our poise, that’s when we lose control of the situation,” Brown said.

Taking most of the physical and verbal shots is James, the team’s 23-year-old leader. Brown credits James for keeping his cool and setting a tone for the entire team.

“It takes a special human being to keep their poise through everything that’s going on ... the crowd chanting (“overrated”), the hard fouls and all the pressure laid upon this young man’s shoulders,” Brown said.

Brown, a veteran of playoff runs with San Antonio and Indiana also, thinks this a unique situation for James and the team.

“There’s been so many playoff series that I’ve gone through and ... I’ve been involved with some hostile ones, but not necessarily the type of booing LeBron has faced and the individual criticism he’s faced,” Brown said.

But James continues to do his best to stay above it all in games and when talking with media.

“If he does that, our team will follow,” Brown said.

Brown expects James and Co. to be focused on closing out the series Wednesday. They went 3-1 in close-out games last season and are 4-3 in such games with James the last two years.

But there’s always the fear of a letdown, which the Cavs appeared to suffer in Thursday’s blowout loss at Washington.

“I feel like we’re saying ... and doing the right things,” Brown said. “But there’s not something magical or a 100 percent guarantee that I can sit here and say there won’t be a letdown. I don’t think there will be. Our players are focused.”